[quote name="Misplaced" date="2021-05-05 20:29:11" ]
People are allowed to be frustrated when their playstyle suddenly shifts when they thought it'd be stable. Deal with it.
[quote name="Toska" date="2021-05-05 19:58:05" ]
Is it just me or does this also apply to the people who were mad about the eyes for the past 3 years?
[/quote]
yes, yes it does.
[/quote]
I joined in 2019, after the first eye update. So yeah, I'm used to how RNG works with natural eye types and then staff suddenly pops up with new vials after THREE YEARS and literally just removes all the satisfaction of owning a special eye type because now everything can be customized
Misplaced wrote on 2021-05-05 20:29:11:
People are allowed to be frustrated when their playstyle suddenly shifts when they thought it'd be stable. Deal with it.
Toska wrote on 2021-05-05 19:58:05:
Is it just me or does this also apply to the people who were mad about the eyes for the past 3 years?
yes, yes it does.
I joined in 2019, after the first eye update. So yeah, I'm used to how RNG works with natural eye types and then staff suddenly pops up with new vials after THREE YEARS and literally just removes all the satisfaction of owning a special eye type because now everything can be customized
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[quote name="Avarice" date="2021-05-05 23:12:47" ]They're never going back up in price. Why on earth would you buy a vial that gives you a TINY chance of the specific eyes you want when there is a vial that gives you a 100% chance of the eyes you want? That market was wiped out the instant the update was released, forever. If they released an item that let you pick the colours you wanted to change your dragon to, not a single scatterscroll more would ever be purchased again.
Scattersights were also extremely stable relative to other investment items. They were never coming back (according to staff) and breeding for eyes was always going to be the only mechanic (also according to staff) so they were both limited and had a function nothing else could replicate. They were about as safe of a bet as you could make in Flight Rising - their value had been essentially guaranteed by staff communications for three years. You tolerate fluctuations in price, absolutely, that's normal in any kind of investment - but a complete and permanent gutting of the market? No, that's not normal or something anyone could have predicted when choosing scattersights as their item. This is seriously unprecedented in FR history and should not be taken lightly; they essentially set up an economic system of storing your wealth in investment items that will hold or increase in value, then liquidating when you're ready to buy something, and for the first time they've shown willingness to completely pull the rug out from under stable items with no warning.
Sure makes me think about the sprites currently in my hoard, for instance. And I only had a handful of vials!!
[/quote]
Maybe not to as much as they were before, but right now they're hovering around 90-100g from the 40g they dropped to right after the announcement. Why would people buy them? Well, why do people start scatter projects when they could use that money to save up for a specific dragon instead? Because they find it fun. Even setting that aside, they're a limited item, which is something that people collect, and likewise if people think there could be a market for them that will cause people to buy them too. And, you know, maybe they'll never go up again past this price, but there's no way to know for sure.
I really can't agree that this is unprecedented, though. They crashed the Elim market by giving everyone free Eliminates and it's never fully recovered. (When I first joined, they went for 800g and up. The first Coli dragon I bought cost 1200g, and I bought it with real money). Now they only go for 200-300g anymore, and rarely raise any further in price.
And I'm sure it's not the only other example someone could dig up of staff's actions directly affecting the market. I don't disagree that better communication could have improved the situation, but what's done is done, and there are really only two possible outcomes: staff will see the response to this and try to change how they address these situations, or they'll be unable to do so and this situation will unfortunately repeat itself. But sometimes there are reasons that keep dev teams from communicating with their playerbases and there's nothing anyone can do about it.
Avarice wrote on 2021-05-05 23:12:47:
They're never going back up in price. Why on earth would you buy a vial that gives you a TINY chance of the specific eyes you want when there is a vial that gives you a 100% chance of the eyes you want? That market was wiped out the instant the update was released, forever. If they released an item that let you pick the colours you wanted to change your dragon to, not a single scatterscroll more would ever be purchased again.
Scattersights were also extremely stable relative to other investment items. They were never coming back (according to staff) and breeding for eyes was always going to be the only mechanic (also according to staff) so they were both limited and had a function nothing else could replicate. They were about as safe of a bet as you could make in Flight Rising - their value had been essentially guaranteed by staff communications for three years. You tolerate fluctuations in price, absolutely, that's normal in any kind of investment - but a complete and permanent gutting of the market? No, that's not normal or something anyone could have predicted when choosing scattersights as their item. This is seriously unprecedented in FR history and should not be taken lightly; they essentially set up an economic system of storing your wealth in investment items that will hold or increase in value, then liquidating when you're ready to buy something, and for the first time they've shown willingness to completely pull the rug out from under stable items with no warning.
Sure makes me think about the sprites currently in my hoard, for instance. And I only had a handful of vials!!
Maybe not to as much as they were before, but right now they're hovering around 90-100g from the 40g they dropped to right after the announcement. Why would people buy them? Well, why do people start scatter projects when they could use that money to save up for a specific dragon instead? Because they find it fun. Even setting that aside, they're a limited item, which is something that people collect, and likewise if people think there could be a market for them that will cause people to buy them too. And, you know, maybe they'll never go up again past this price, but there's no way to know for sure.
I really can't agree that this is unprecedented, though. They crashed the Elim market by giving everyone free Eliminates and it's never fully recovered. (When I first joined, they went for 800g and up. The first Coli dragon I bought cost 1200g, and I bought it with real money). Now they only go for 200-300g anymore, and rarely raise any further in price.
And I'm sure it's not the only other example someone could dig up of staff's actions directly affecting the market. I don't disagree that better communication could have improved the situation, but what's done is done, and there are really only two possible outcomes: staff will see the response to this and try to change how they address these situations, or they'll be unable to do so and this situation will unfortunately repeat itself. But sometimes there are reasons that keep dev teams from communicating with their playerbases and there's nothing anyone can do about it.
i believe that you believe there is a heaven
where you belong.
he/him
[quote name="GuidanceOfficer" date="2021-05-05 19:44:46" ]
I think the thing that I don't see in this argument is that, like, you can want to play the game a certain way because you're an older player and that's fine. But things that make the game more challenging for YOU make it more restrictive for new players. I'm sorry but just because you've put time into this game, doesn't mean you're the majority of its playerbase, and even if you are, that doesn't mean the devs have to pander to you.
Something I noticed when this update came out is that it's another update that people have been asking for for ages, that for YEARS if you BOTHERED to suggest in the suggestions forum, people would shout you down and condescendingly tell you that's not how the game works. And people do that for almost any update. Remember when pose-changing scrolls were unthinkable? I got yelled at for suggesting to add a "return to nesting grounds" button to the page where you're shown your new hatchlings!
People on this website resist literally any update that makes the game experience smoother and it's one of the reasons I'm no longer as active on Flight Rising. Maybe having the game be extra challenging keeps you coming back. But it makes other players not want to return to the site when anything they want to do to their dragons is ridiculously expensive or time-consuming. I understand that that's a part of the game's design, but updates that balance that and make it more viable for less dedicated players are important.
You aren't more deserving of your dream flight rising experience than other players for any reason.
[/quote]
Part of the problem, as I believe someone mentioned earlier in this thread, is that people who play for the RNG challenge and people who play to customize specific dragons are kind of at odds here simply by the fact that being able to choose specific eye types out of all available eyes types kind of takes away from pure RNG hatches to some people who enjoy that, just as only being able to obtain a certain eye type through random breeding frustrates players who prefer customizing their dragons to potentially years-long breeding projects for the result they wanted, completely blocking them from reliably getting special dragons with special eyes if they want them hatched on a certain date or some other milestone that makes that dragon mean something to them.
There's nothing wrong with either of these views, just as I believe there isn't anything [i]inherently[/i] wrong with some eyes being breeding-only or all eye types being available by vial. As I am someone who has lost the joy I got from rare eyes because of this update I wish staff would have found some kind of middle ground that kept the challenge but still offered a way to influence eyes if you wanted to somehow, but I get that they were trying to give players better access to a cosmetic feature that would allow them to perfect their dragons. There have been great suggestions over the years that I feel could have worked for both groups. I am glad that people who have been so upset over eyes for so long now have a solution that pleases them though.
Swinging the eye mechanics wildly from one (admittedly probably smaller) group of players' preference to the other after leading everyone to believe for so long that these original natural eyes wouldn't be released through vials, though, was unfair.
As you said, nobody is more deserving of Flight Rising features that cater to [i]them[/i] than anyone else is, so why was the solution to the original eye update backlash to do just that, to some extent?
I'm not saying no changes should have been made. People should enjoy their time here, and if being able to choose primal or multi-gaze eyes for specific dragons makes your FR experience better, then I hope you're having a good time and not letting the differing opinions of other players get you down. The old system wasn't perfect, but I think the vials have made a lot of people feel like staff abandoned them in favor of people who play the game differently, and that hurts just as much as not being able to participate in a feature because it serves a different style of players than you in the first place.
Many people have pointed out that if the vials had been released shortly after the original eye update it likely wouldn't have received half as much disappointment as it has now. Those who have spent the last few years enjoying the random gift of a special-eyed hatch that couldn't be gained any other way wouldn't have had the time to grow that attachment to the feature. Heck, with the tiny percentages for the rarest eyes being what they are I wouldn't be surprised if only a handful of people even [i]had[/i] hatched special eyes by then. The environment would have been different.
-----
For reference, I was here for the original eye update and I was among the few who were totally fine with it, but I remember a lot of the issue (or at least a facet of the issue) was that older players couldn't customize dragons that had existed before the update. I do get that. I [i]desperately[/i] wanted primal on my custom progen, but when my luck decided not to play nice with me during the scattersight window it didn't wreck the game for me. She just wasn't meant to have primal eyes, much like she wasn't meant to be an imperial. It was fine. I'd get primals someday, just not on her. No big deal.
But I'm also a player who [i]adores[/i] breeding mechanics and mystery. I breed huge color ranges and often keep the weird-looking offspring because I love the surprise of getting combinations that you might not try to gene but wind up working really well with the right ones. I know I'm in the minority here. Heck, I might be the only one on the site that enjoys that specific thing. But hey, it's kept me entertained all this time. Rare, RNG-exclusive eyes just added to that fun for me, and now that I have the option to drop 500kt on a primal vial or whatever they don't hold the same appeal. But that's just where I'm coming from.
[b]tl;dr[/b] The update isn't a bad thing. I'm glad lots of people are happier now, though I've personally lost my excitement for eyes with the new vials. This fix feels kind of like an alienation of some players for some others, and that part sucks, but I know staff only meant it from a place of goodness and inclusivity for all players. I just wish they had done something a little less drastic to even it out rather than jumping from one side to the other.
Idk I probably just talked in a big circle. I'm sorry if this was confusing XP
GuidanceOfficer wrote on 2021-05-05 19:44:46:
I think the thing that I don't see in this argument is that, like, you can want to play the game a certain way because you're an older player and that's fine. But things that make the game more challenging for YOU make it more restrictive for new players. I'm sorry but just because you've put time into this game, doesn't mean you're the majority of its playerbase, and even if you are, that doesn't mean the devs have to pander to you.
Something I noticed when this update came out is that it's another update that people have been asking for for ages, that for YEARS if you BOTHERED to suggest in the suggestions forum, people would shout you down and condescendingly tell you that's not how the game works. And people do that for almost any update. Remember when pose-changing scrolls were unthinkable? I got yelled at for suggesting to add a "return to nesting grounds" button to the page where you're shown your new hatchlings!
People on this website resist literally any update that makes the game experience smoother and it's one of the reasons I'm no longer as active on Flight Rising. Maybe having the game be extra challenging keeps you coming back. But it makes other players not want to return to the site when anything they want to do to their dragons is ridiculously expensive or time-consuming. I understand that that's a part of the game's design, but updates that balance that and make it more viable for less dedicated players are important.
You aren't more deserving of your dream flight rising experience than other players for any reason.
Part of the problem, as I believe someone mentioned earlier in this thread, is that people who play for the RNG challenge and people who play to customize specific dragons are kind of at odds here simply by the fact that being able to choose specific eye types out of all available eyes types kind of takes away from pure RNG hatches to some people who enjoy that, just as only being able to obtain a certain eye type through random breeding frustrates players who prefer customizing their dragons to potentially years-long breeding projects for the result they wanted, completely blocking them from reliably getting special dragons with special eyes if they want them hatched on a certain date or some other milestone that makes that dragon mean something to them.
There's nothing wrong with either of these views, just as I believe there isn't anything
inherently wrong with some eyes being breeding-only or all eye types being available by vial. As I am someone who has lost the joy I got from rare eyes because of this update I wish staff would have found some kind of middle ground that kept the challenge but still offered a way to influence eyes if you wanted to somehow, but I get that they were trying to give players better access to a cosmetic feature that would allow them to perfect their dragons. There have been great suggestions over the years that I feel could have worked for both groups. I am glad that people who have been so upset over eyes for so long now have a solution that pleases them though.
Swinging the eye mechanics wildly from one (admittedly probably smaller) group of players' preference to the other after leading everyone to believe for so long that these original natural eyes wouldn't be released through vials, though, was unfair.
As you said, nobody is more deserving of Flight Rising features that cater to
them than anyone else is, so why was the solution to the original eye update backlash to do just that, to some extent?
I'm not saying no changes should have been made. People should enjoy their time here, and if being able to choose primal or multi-gaze eyes for specific dragons makes your FR experience better, then I hope you're having a good time and not letting the differing opinions of other players get you down. The old system wasn't perfect, but I think the vials have made a lot of people feel like staff abandoned them in favor of people who play the game differently, and that hurts just as much as not being able to participate in a feature because it serves a different style of players than you in the first place.
Many people have pointed out that if the vials had been released shortly after the original eye update it likely wouldn't have received half as much disappointment as it has now. Those who have spent the last few years enjoying the random gift of a special-eyed hatch that couldn't be gained any other way wouldn't have had the time to grow that attachment to the feature. Heck, with the tiny percentages for the rarest eyes being what they are I wouldn't be surprised if only a handful of people even
had hatched special eyes by then. The environment would have been different.
For reference, I was here for the original eye update and I was among the few who were totally fine with it, but I remember a lot of the issue (or at least a facet of the issue) was that older players couldn't customize dragons that had existed before the update. I do get that. I
desperately wanted primal on my custom progen, but when my luck decided not to play nice with me during the scattersight window it didn't wreck the game for me. She just wasn't meant to have primal eyes, much like she wasn't meant to be an imperial. It was fine. I'd get primals someday, just not on her. No big deal.
But I'm also a player who
adores breeding mechanics and mystery. I breed huge color ranges and often keep the weird-looking offspring because I love the surprise of getting combinations that you might not try to gene but wind up working really well with the right ones. I know I'm in the minority here. Heck, I might be the only one on the site that enjoys that specific thing. But hey, it's kept me entertained all this time. Rare, RNG-exclusive eyes just added to that fun for me, and now that I have the option to drop 500kt on a primal vial or whatever they don't hold the same appeal. But that's just where I'm coming from.
tl;dr The update isn't a bad thing. I'm glad lots of people are happier now, though I've personally lost my excitement for eyes with the new vials. This fix feels kind of like an alienation of some players for some others, and that part sucks, but I know staff only meant it from a place of goodness and inclusivity for all players. I just wish they had done something a little less drastic to even it out rather than jumping from one side to the other.
Idk I probably just talked in a big circle. I'm sorry if this was confusing XP
[quote]But sometimes there are reasons that keep dev teams from communicating with their playerbases and there's nothing anyone can do about it.
[/quote]
They can quit. But jokes aside...
[quote name="000000" date="2021-05-05 23:40:06" ]
[quote name="Avarice" date="2021-05-05 23:12:47" ]They're never going back up in price. Why on earth would you buy a vial that gives you a TINY chance of the specific eyes you want when there is a vial that gives you a 100% chance of the eyes you want? That market was wiped out the instant the update was released, forever. If they released an item that let you pick the colours you wanted to change your dragon to, not a single scatterscroll more would ever be purchased again.
Scattersights were also extremely stable relative to other investment items. They were never coming back (according to staff) and breeding for eyes was always going to be the only mechanic (also according to staff) so they were both limited and had a function nothing else could replicate. They were about as safe of a bet as you could make in Flight Rising - their value had been essentially guaranteed by staff communications for three years. You tolerate fluctuations in price, absolutely, that's normal in any kind of investment - but a complete and permanent gutting of the market? No, that's not normal or something anyone could have predicted when choosing scattersights as their item. This is seriously unprecedented in FR history and should not be taken lightly; they essentially set up an economic system of storing your wealth in investment items that will hold or increase in value, then liquidating when you're ready to buy something, and for the first time they've shown willingness to completely pull the rug out from under stable items with no warning.
Sure makes me think about the sprites currently in my hoard, for instance. And I only had a handful of vials!!
[/quote]
Maybe not to as much as they were before, but right now they're hovering around 90-100g from the 40g they dropped to right after the announcement. Why would people buy them? Well, why do people start scatter projects when they could use that money to save up for a specific dragon instead? Because they find it fun. Even setting that aside, they're a limited item, which is something that people collect, and likewise if people think there could be a market for them that will cause people to buy them too. And, you know, maybe they'll never go up again past this price, but there's no way to know for sure.
I really can't agree that this is unprecedented, though. They crashed the Elim market by giving everyone free Eliminates and it's never fully recovered. (When I first joined, they went for 800g and up. The first Coli dragon I bought cost 1200g, and I bought it with real money). Now they only go for 200-300g anymore, and rarely raise any further in price.
And I'm sure it's not the only other example someone could dig up of staff's actions directly affecting the market. I don't disagree that better communication could have improved the situation, but what's done is done, and there are really only two possible outcomes: staff will see the response to this and try to change how they address these situations, or they'll be unable to do so and this situation will unfortunately repeat itself. But sometimes there are reasons that keep dev teams from communicating with their playerbases and there's nothing anyone can do about it.
[/quote]
I really can't agree with your "really can't agree". Eliminate and Scattersight are definitely not the same. Scattersight was on its way to being the mini-imperial scroll, it altered a dragon's appearance and its retired, so with every usage of the Scattersight, there will be lesser Scattersights available. This guarantees that Scattersight will only increase in price. On the other hand, Eliminate wasn't retired. It can be farmed from the coli, drops rarely but will continue to be generated, this makes Eliminate prices fluctuate and unstable because you will never know whats the number of available Eliminates in the market. Not only that, the devs can choose to give out free Eliminate any time they so wish, add it to the marketplace, make every dragon come with a permanent eliminate they can't take off, the possibilities are endless. Now [i]thats[/i] a gamble. Scattersight was not a gamble. Deramadus was able to better put it into words than I ever could.
[quote name="Deramadus" date="2021-05-05 09:44:05" ]
And the scattersights - they are a whole different, but equally important, problem. Items are money in FR, and that is just plain truth that cannot be disputed. Nowadays, with nothing, not even fest items, remaining retired, no wonder people are clutching onto their limited assets. [i]Because there are no new assets being created[/i]. Scattersights are very controversial - I hated them when they were first introduced and even now I still hold a grudge against them - but it does not change the fact that this was the first retired asset to come out in [i]years[/i]. At this point, scattersights became akin to eggs and retired fest items, and flowed into the marketplace as something to trade with. And there is nothing wrong with this. People were not taking 'advantage' of anything, they were using what they were given so that they could make light of a bad situation.
We were told that scattersights would not be brought back, which to this day is true. Unfortunately, it no longer matters since there is a far cheaper method that guarantees you get what you want. Whether the staff meant it or not, this absolutely obliterated the value of the item to around 10% of what it was worth before. Yes, the scattersights are still retired, but it would make no difference if they were brought back, no? The damage has been done and the market people have been building for 3 years has been pushed over overnight. With staff being so adamant, as Kydoimos said, on retiring vials for good, it's obvious that they became a bank item like sprites and eggs. So to suddenly have them be rendered worthless definitely feels like a stab in the back. Because, it was heavily implied that the eye types would not be moving from breeding exclusivity, and you [i]cannot [/i]fault people for thinking so after 3 years of near silence on the topic. As Toska said:
[quote=Toska]
Here's a [url=https://www1.flightrising.com/forums/frd/2457301#post_2457301]quote[/url]:
"Going forward, here's what we'd like everyone to know:
Vials of Scattersight will not be returning to the game; we still think it's important that from this point forward, natural eye types be part of the breeding system exclusively."[/quote]
There is nothing here to imply that eye types would be put on the market, in fact it implies the opposite. So it's incredibly frustrating that people don't realize how much of a shock this was to many people.
All in all, it needed to happen. But any form of communication, even just a 'we're considering the eye dilemma' would have given people some hints as to what would happen. Instead, we got no warning, and a bank item has been rendered worthless and obsolete, which people have every right to be angry about. To put it into perspective, it's nearly like if they put a sprite item on the market for 10% of a sprite's actual cost, but it gives you a random sprite instead of the sprite you want. Yes, technically the sprites haven't been unretired, but there is now an item that makes them obsolete anyways, so what's the difference?
Anyways, I know I missed some points, but I know others have already covered it. I [u]am not[/u] saying that this update is inherently bad, just poorly communicated with seemingly unpredicted negative results. I hope this helps some people make sense of the problem more. Thank you.
[/quote]
This eye update is unprecedented because if they can do this to a retired item, then what's stopping us from reaching our claws into the next big thing? Cue [url=https://www1.flightrising.com/forums/sug/3005065#post_3005065]suggestion to re-release imp scrolls and/or eggs[/url]. From what I read, its a legality issue but I am sure there is some loophole or technicality we can exploit. Contact the KS people and if the majority is okay, we can re-release the imp scroll, or release a similar lookalike and call it by another name, and my favourite: scroll of abandonment. Every imp came from the G1 imperials KS people owned, so by using the scroll of abandonment, you are technically not creating new G1 imperials...right? (Edit: I thought about it, we can just differentiate the natural born G1s from the abandoned G1s by putting a mark in the dragon's profile. People can still go for the natural born G1s if they want the challenge. Problem solved.)
This is not salt, I assure you. Imperials is the dragon that attracted me to FR in the first place, so imagine my disappointment when I can't make a pair of imperial progens, imagine my next disappointment when I realize I can't own G1 imperials without going broke, or even if i was broke. This eye update have shown us that the minority doesn't matter, and as long as the majority is happy, then its okay. If this is the new norm, I am going to roll with it, and people who can afford imp scrolls are definitely the minority of the minority. And if they don't like the update? I am going to quote all the replies we might have seen:
"Why are you so selfish for not wanting this update? You are just greedy!"
"It's a gamble, you chose to take a risk"
"You should be happy! This update benefits you too!"
If anyone has more spectacular replies, please add to the list and we will build a full 360 degree impenetrable defense.
Quote:
But sometimes there are reasons that keep dev teams from communicating with their playerbases and there's nothing anyone can do about it.
They can quit. But jokes aside...
000000 wrote on 2021-05-05 23:40:06:
Avarice wrote on 2021-05-05 23:12:47:
They're never going back up in price. Why on earth would you buy a vial that gives you a TINY chance of the specific eyes you want when there is a vial that gives you a 100% chance of the eyes you want? That market was wiped out the instant the update was released, forever. If they released an item that let you pick the colours you wanted to change your dragon to, not a single scatterscroll more would ever be purchased again.
Scattersights were also extremely stable relative to other investment items. They were never coming back (according to staff) and breeding for eyes was always going to be the only mechanic (also according to staff) so they were both limited and had a function nothing else could replicate. They were about as safe of a bet as you could make in Flight Rising - their value had been essentially guaranteed by staff communications for three years. You tolerate fluctuations in price, absolutely, that's normal in any kind of investment - but a complete and permanent gutting of the market? No, that's not normal or something anyone could have predicted when choosing scattersights as their item. This is seriously unprecedented in FR history and should not be taken lightly; they essentially set up an economic system of storing your wealth in investment items that will hold or increase in value, then liquidating when you're ready to buy something, and for the first time they've shown willingness to completely pull the rug out from under stable items with no warning.
Sure makes me think about the sprites currently in my hoard, for instance. And I only had a handful of vials!!
Maybe not to as much as they were before, but right now they're hovering around 90-100g from the 40g they dropped to right after the announcement. Why would people buy them? Well, why do people start scatter projects when they could use that money to save up for a specific dragon instead? Because they find it fun. Even setting that aside, they're a limited item, which is something that people collect, and likewise if people think there could be a market for them that will cause people to buy them too. And, you know, maybe they'll never go up again past this price, but there's no way to know for sure.
I really can't agree that this is unprecedented, though. They crashed the Elim market by giving everyone free Eliminates and it's never fully recovered. (When I first joined, they went for 800g and up. The first Coli dragon I bought cost 1200g, and I bought it with real money). Now they only go for 200-300g anymore, and rarely raise any further in price.
And I'm sure it's not the only other example someone could dig up of staff's actions directly affecting the market. I don't disagree that better communication could have improved the situation, but what's done is done, and there are really only two possible outcomes: staff will see the response to this and try to change how they address these situations, or they'll be unable to do so and this situation will unfortunately repeat itself. But sometimes there are reasons that keep dev teams from communicating with their playerbases and there's nothing anyone can do about it.
I really can't agree with your "really can't agree". Eliminate and Scattersight are definitely not the same. Scattersight was on its way to being the mini-imperial scroll, it altered a dragon's appearance and its retired, so with every usage of the Scattersight, there will be lesser Scattersights available. This guarantees that Scattersight will only increase in price. On the other hand, Eliminate wasn't retired. It can be farmed from the coli, drops rarely but will continue to be generated, this makes Eliminate prices fluctuate and unstable because you will never know whats the number of available Eliminates in the market. Not only that, the devs can choose to give out free Eliminate any time they so wish, add it to the marketplace, make every dragon come with a permanent eliminate they can't take off, the possibilities are endless. Now
thats a gamble. Scattersight was not a gamble. Deramadus was able to better put it into words than I ever could.
Deramadus wrote on 2021-05-05 09:44:05:
And the scattersights - they are a whole different, but equally important, problem. Items are money in FR, and that is just plain truth that cannot be disputed. Nowadays, with nothing, not even fest items, remaining retired, no wonder people are clutching onto their limited assets.
Because there are no new assets being created. Scattersights are very controversial - I hated them when they were first introduced and even now I still hold a grudge against them - but it does not change the fact that this was the first retired asset to come out in
years. At this point, scattersights became akin to eggs and retired fest items, and flowed into the marketplace as something to trade with. And there is nothing wrong with this. People were not taking 'advantage' of anything, they were using what they were given so that they could make light of a bad situation.
We were told that scattersights would not be brought back, which to this day is true. Unfortunately, it no longer matters since there is a far cheaper method that guarantees you get what you want. Whether the staff meant it or not, this absolutely obliterated the value of the item to around 10% of what it was worth before. Yes, the scattersights are still retired, but it would make no difference if they were brought back, no? The damage has been done and the market people have been building for 3 years has been pushed over overnight. With staff being so adamant, as Kydoimos said, on retiring vials for good, it's obvious that they became a bank item like sprites and eggs. So to suddenly have them be rendered worthless definitely feels like a stab in the back. Because, it was heavily implied that the eye types would not be moving from breeding exclusivity, and you
cannot fault people for thinking so after 3 years of near silence on the topic. As Toska said:
Toska wrote:
Here's a
quote:
"Going forward, here's what we'd like everyone to know:
Vials of Scattersight will not be returning to the game; we still think it's important that from this point forward, natural eye types be part of the breeding system exclusively."
There is nothing here to imply that eye types would be put on the market, in fact it implies the opposite. So it's incredibly frustrating that people don't realize how much of a shock this was to many people.
All in all, it needed to happen. But any form of communication, even just a 'we're considering the eye dilemma' would have given people some hints as to what would happen. Instead, we got no warning, and a bank item has been rendered worthless and obsolete, which people have every right to be angry about. To put it into perspective, it's nearly like if they put a sprite item on the market for 10% of a sprite's actual cost, but it gives you a random sprite instead of the sprite you want. Yes, technically the sprites haven't been unretired, but there is now an item that makes them obsolete anyways, so what's the difference?
Anyways, I know I missed some points, but I know others have already covered it. I
am not saying that this update is inherently bad, just poorly communicated with seemingly unpredicted negative results. I hope this helps some people make sense of the problem more. Thank you.
This eye update is unprecedented because if they can do this to a retired item, then what's stopping us from reaching our claws into the next big thing? Cue
suggestion to re-release imp scrolls and/or eggs. From what I read, its a legality issue but I am sure there is some loophole or technicality we can exploit. Contact the KS people and if the majority is okay, we can re-release the imp scroll, or release a similar lookalike and call it by another name, and my favourite: scroll of abandonment. Every imp came from the G1 imperials KS people owned, so by using the scroll of abandonment, you are technically not creating new G1 imperials...right? (Edit: I thought about it, we can just differentiate the natural born G1s from the abandoned G1s by putting a mark in the dragon's profile. People can still go for the natural born G1s if they want the challenge. Problem solved.)
This is not salt, I assure you. Imperials is the dragon that attracted me to FR in the first place, so imagine my disappointment when I can't make a pair of imperial progens, imagine my next disappointment when I realize I can't own G1 imperials without going broke, or even if i was broke. This eye update have shown us that the minority doesn't matter, and as long as the majority is happy, then its okay. If this is the new norm, I am going to roll with it, and people who can afford imp scrolls are definitely the minority of the minority. And if they don't like the update? I am going to quote all the replies we might have seen:
"Why are you so selfish for not wanting this update? You are just greedy!"
"It's a gamble, you chose to take a risk"
"You should be happy! This update benefits you too!"
If anyone has more spectacular replies, please add to the list and we will build a full 360 degree impenetrable defense.
[quote name="@000000" date="2021-05-05 23:40:06" ]
[quote name="Avarice" date="2021-05-05 23:12:47" ]They're never going back up in price. Why on earth would you buy a vial that gives you a TINY chance of the specific eyes you want when there is a vial that gives you a 100% chance of the eyes you want? That market was wiped out the instant the update was released, forever. If they released an item that let you pick the colours you wanted to change your dragon to, not a single scatterscroll more would ever be purchased again.
Scattersights were also extremely stable relative to other investment items. They were never coming back (according to staff) and breeding for eyes was always going to be the only mechanic (also according to staff) so they were both limited and had a function nothing else could replicate. They were about as safe of a bet as you could make in Flight Rising - their value had been essentially guaranteed by staff communications for three years. You tolerate fluctuations in price, absolutely, that's normal in any kind of investment - but a complete and permanent gutting of the market? No, that's not normal or something anyone could have predicted when choosing scattersights as their item. This is seriously unprecedented in FR history and should not be taken lightly; they essentially set up an economic system of storing your wealth in investment items that will hold or increase in value, then liquidating when you're ready to buy something, and for the first time they've shown willingness to completely pull the rug out from under stable items with no warning.
Sure makes me think about the sprites currently in my hoard, for instance. And I only had a handful of vials!!
[/quote]
Maybe not to as much as they were before, but right now they're hovering around 90-100g from the 40g they dropped to right after the announcement. Why would people buy them? Well, why do people start scatter projects when they could use that money to save up for a specific dragon instead? Because they find it fun. Even setting that aside, they're a limited item, which is something that people collect, and likewise if people think there could be a market for them that will cause people to buy them too. And, you know, maybe they'll never go up again past this price, but there's no way to know for sure.
I really can't agree that this is unprecedented, though. They crashed the Elim market by giving everyone free Eliminates and it's never fully recovered. (When I first joined, they went for 800g and up. The first Coli dragon I bought cost 1200g, and I bought it with real money). Now they only go for 200-300g anymore, and rarely raise any further in price.
And I'm sure it's not the only other example someone could dig up of staff's actions directly affecting the market. I don't disagree that better communication could have improved the situation, but what's done is done, and there are really only two possible outcomes: staff will see the response to this and try to change how they address these situations, or they'll be unable to do so and this situation will unfortunately repeat itself. But sometimes there are reasons that keep dev teams from communicating with their playerbases and there's nothing anyone can do about it.
[/quote]
Oh there's a bunch of other markets that have been crashed by updates and changes to the game over the course of FR's history, particularly ones that staff had said "likely wouldn't happen".
Putting aside the obvious addition of Roundsey and her retired items, the #1 example that always comes to my mind is the Gene Preview market.
In the early days, Staff had said they didn't want to have a site-sanctioned way of previewing colors, flights, genes and breed-changes on existing dragons. The reasoning was that customizing and/or hatching dragons with new genes and colors was supposed to be a "surprise" (is any of this sounding familiar yet?) and that players could discover new gene/color/breed combos by hatching them and sharing them.
There was a whole player-run market for previewing dragons with genes. You'd send your dragon to a Preview service telling them the gene or breed-change you wanted previewed on them (because you could basically only do one at a time) and then they'd take a screenshot of the preview window on their end and share it with you after sending back your dragon for a fee.
It was...incredibly unsafe. People frequently lost dragons to scammers but it was also a fairly lucrative business for the players who ran legit preview services, especially if you had all the coveted gem genes to preview (people didn't want to shell out real money and not know what their dragon was gonna look like).
And then, Staff changed their minds about genes and breed-changes needing to be "surprises" and the Scrying Workshop was added. Over night, Player-Run Gene Preview Services were dusted. The players who had spent money on genes and breed-changes specifically to use for previews either re-sold them or used them (and I'm pretty sure some people quit FR over this too).
This situation 100% reminds me of this current one (and I'm awaiting the day we ever get the ability to change temp change our nest elements or a way to breed in other nest elements because all the Nest Rental Services are gonna be in the exact same boat). But I don't think anybody would argue that wasn't ultimately a change for the better.
It's slightly less related but this situation also somewhat reminds me of waaaaay early on in the game when players wanted Staff to do something about the fact that dragon prices were dropping. Used to be that a triple basic imperial (of any Gen, not just Gen2) would cost several hundred thousands in treasure, but as more people joined and players bred more dragons well, supply became what it is. I remember there being threads in Suggestions for dragons to either "die", "become infertile after a period" or any other number of things that were designed to try and prop up the "dying dragon market" and the Staff refused all of them, in fact outright stating that they'd intended from the outset that dragons were meant to be cheap and plentiful in order for players to breed and customize their desired dragons.
...Pretty sure some people quit over that too.
Basically, I think the lesson here is, don't count on Staff to maintain [i]any[/i] market, least of all any player-created ones. It's not their job. If something is in the best interest of the game's longevity or safety or what have you, it's liable to be changed or manipulated because [i]that[/i] is the Dev's job.
I'm saying this as somebody who shelled out 10Kg for a G1 Primal a few months back and also has a handful of Scattersight vials that are going to be gathering Strange Dust in my hoard for quite some time. I understand being bummed out but the Devs are actually doing their jobs in terms of the site as a whole. I really don't think there was any way for them to communicate even the tiniest hint about Eye Vials without crashing that market. It happens all the time with real markets and stock. At least this way, everybody found out about it at exactly the same time instead of missing a crucial "hint" on an out of the way FRD thread or Dev Q&A or something like that.
Honestly, IMO in a game like this, if you're going to try "investing", always play the short odds over the long ones. You can try to follow the trends, particularly what people are talking about in Suggestions and FRD because that can give you a decent idea of what might be coming down the pike change-wise, but it's always going to be a game of chance. /insert shrug emoji here
@
000000 wrote on 2021-05-05 23:40:06:
Avarice wrote on 2021-05-05 23:12:47:
They're never going back up in price. Why on earth would you buy a vial that gives you a TINY chance of the specific eyes you want when there is a vial that gives you a 100% chance of the eyes you want? That market was wiped out the instant the update was released, forever. If they released an item that let you pick the colours you wanted to change your dragon to, not a single scatterscroll more would ever be purchased again.
Scattersights were also extremely stable relative to other investment items. They were never coming back (according to staff) and breeding for eyes was always going to be the only mechanic (also according to staff) so they were both limited and had a function nothing else could replicate. They were about as safe of a bet as you could make in Flight Rising - their value had been essentially guaranteed by staff communications for three years. You tolerate fluctuations in price, absolutely, that's normal in any kind of investment - but a complete and permanent gutting of the market? No, that's not normal or something anyone could have predicted when choosing scattersights as their item. This is seriously unprecedented in FR history and should not be taken lightly; they essentially set up an economic system of storing your wealth in investment items that will hold or increase in value, then liquidating when you're ready to buy something, and for the first time they've shown willingness to completely pull the rug out from under stable items with no warning.
Sure makes me think about the sprites currently in my hoard, for instance. And I only had a handful of vials!!
Maybe not to as much as they were before, but right now they're hovering around 90-100g from the 40g they dropped to right after the announcement. Why would people buy them? Well, why do people start scatter projects when they could use that money to save up for a specific dragon instead? Because they find it fun. Even setting that aside, they're a limited item, which is something that people collect, and likewise if people think there could be a market for them that will cause people to buy them too. And, you know, maybe they'll never go up again past this price, but there's no way to know for sure.
I really can't agree that this is unprecedented, though. They crashed the Elim market by giving everyone free Eliminates and it's never fully recovered. (When I first joined, they went for 800g and up. The first Coli dragon I bought cost 1200g, and I bought it with real money). Now they only go for 200-300g anymore, and rarely raise any further in price.
And I'm sure it's not the only other example someone could dig up of staff's actions directly affecting the market. I don't disagree that better communication could have improved the situation, but what's done is done, and there are really only two possible outcomes: staff will see the response to this and try to change how they address these situations, or they'll be unable to do so and this situation will unfortunately repeat itself. But sometimes there are reasons that keep dev teams from communicating with their playerbases and there's nothing anyone can do about it.
Oh there's a bunch of other markets that have been crashed by updates and changes to the game over the course of FR's history, particularly ones that staff had said "likely wouldn't happen".
Putting aside the obvious addition of Roundsey and her retired items, the #1 example that always comes to my mind is the Gene Preview market.
In the early days, Staff had said they didn't want to have a site-sanctioned way of previewing colors, flights, genes and breed-changes on existing dragons. The reasoning was that customizing and/or hatching dragons with new genes and colors was supposed to be a "surprise" (is any of this sounding familiar yet?) and that players could discover new gene/color/breed combos by hatching them and sharing them.
There was a whole player-run market for previewing dragons with genes. You'd send your dragon to a Preview service telling them the gene or breed-change you wanted previewed on them (because you could basically only do one at a time) and then they'd take a screenshot of the preview window on their end and share it with you after sending back your dragon for a fee.
It was...incredibly unsafe. People frequently lost dragons to scammers but it was also a fairly lucrative business for the players who ran legit preview services, especially if you had all the coveted gem genes to preview (people didn't want to shell out real money and not know what their dragon was gonna look like).
And then, Staff changed their minds about genes and breed-changes needing to be "surprises" and the Scrying Workshop was added. Over night, Player-Run Gene Preview Services were dusted. The players who had spent money on genes and breed-changes specifically to use for previews either re-sold them or used them (and I'm pretty sure some people quit FR over this too).
This situation 100% reminds me of this current one (and I'm awaiting the day we ever get the ability to change temp change our nest elements or a way to breed in other nest elements because all the Nest Rental Services are gonna be in the exact same boat). But I don't think anybody would argue that wasn't ultimately a change for the better.
It's slightly less related but this situation also somewhat reminds me of waaaaay early on in the game when players wanted Staff to do something about the fact that dragon prices were dropping. Used to be that a triple basic imperial (of any Gen, not just Gen2) would cost several hundred thousands in treasure, but as more people joined and players bred more dragons well, supply became what it is. I remember there being threads in Suggestions for dragons to either "die", "become infertile after a period" or any other number of things that were designed to try and prop up the "dying dragon market" and the Staff refused all of them, in fact outright stating that they'd intended from the outset that dragons were meant to be cheap and plentiful in order for players to breed and customize their desired dragons.
...Pretty sure some people quit over that too.
Basically, I think the lesson here is, don't count on Staff to maintain
any market, least of all any player-created ones. It's not their job. If something is in the best interest of the game's longevity or safety or what have you, it's liable to be changed or manipulated because
that is the Dev's job.
I'm saying this as somebody who shelled out 10Kg for a G1 Primal a few months back and also has a handful of Scattersight vials that are going to be gathering Strange Dust in my hoard for quite some time. I understand being bummed out but the Devs are actually doing their jobs in terms of the site as a whole. I really don't think there was any way for them to communicate even the tiniest hint about Eye Vials without crashing that market. It happens all the time with real markets and stock. At least this way, everybody found out about it at exactly the same time instead of missing a crucial "hint" on an out of the way FRD thread or Dev Q&A or something like that.
Honestly, IMO in a game like this, if you're going to try "investing", always play the short odds over the long ones. You can try to follow the trends, particularly what people are talking about in Suggestions and FRD because that can give you a decent idea of what might be coming down the pike change-wise, but it's always going to be a game of chance. /insert shrug emoji here
@
Twizz
I just wanted to say thank you for the history rundown. It's nice seeing everything in one post and see how many times it had happened.
@
Twizz
I just wanted to say thank you for the history rundown. It's nice seeing everything in one post and see how many times it had happened.
I'm on team "I think this update was necessary and is good for the future of FR and I really like it, but why did it take SO long?"
I want to clarify that I've used a single scattersight and have never invested in them, before going on.
Going through a very nit picky loophole like "lol, they're not TECHNICALLY unretired" is enough to make me not trust staff anymore, but the fact that it took them THREE years to come to this very simple solution? Why did it take 3 years? 2 would have been pushing it, but 3? C'mon. As late as 2 years ago, staff said they regretted their choice of releasing scattersight vials, so why didn't they release this sooner? DAYS after the update, they said that they realized that scattersights were a problem. I'm just baffled, literally all of this could have been avoided if it had just not taken 3 years to get an update.
I'm on team "I think this update was necessary and is good for the future of FR and I really like it, but why did it take SO long?"
I want to clarify that I've used a single scattersight and have never invested in them, before going on.
Going through a very nit picky loophole like "lol, they're not TECHNICALLY unretired" is enough to make me not trust staff anymore, but the fact that it took them THREE years to come to this very simple solution? Why did it take 3 years? 2 would have been pushing it, but 3? C'mon. As late as 2 years ago, staff said they regretted their choice of releasing scattersight vials, so why didn't they release this sooner? DAYS after the update, they said that they realized that scattersights were a problem. I'm just baffled, literally all of this could have been avoided if it had just not taken 3 years to get an update.
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> +3 FR
>She/Her
>Stuck in G1 Hell
|
@
Twizz Thank you for writing that out! I knew there was a time when there wasn't a Scrying Workshop, but I'd never heard of the Gene Preview market before.
@
Dreamson IMO there could be multiple reasons for why it took so long, but first of all I think it's important to consider that staff wasn't going to immediately change their minds. There is always a vocal group of players who doesn't like any update, no matter what it is (this is true of everything, not just FR). So they have to spend time monitoring the playerbase to figure out 1. Is it only a vocal minority? 2. What do the majority of players feel? The majority is often silent, which means investing time into figuring out how they feel without their thoughts being conveniently written down. They have to look at site trends, pay attention to what people are doing, and take notice of how it affects the site as a whole. And that's probably not going to happen in ~3 months.
Maybe after a year they decided they didn't like the results and realized they wanted to do something about it, but then the question is: What do they do? They are going to make some people unhappy no matter what. But they obviously want to make as many people happy as possible. And they also want to stay true to their original vision, if they can. On top of all this, they also need to think about how whatever change they make will affect the site as a whole and most importantly what kind of game they want this to be at the end of the day. So then they need time to make choices, brainstorm and come up with ideas— All of this is happening while they are actively working on the development of other parts of the site. It wouldn't surprise me if this process took more than a year considering how busy other parts of development have been. FR is anti-crunch, but that doesn't mean they don't have deadlines to meet, and when the eyes were originally released there were obviously no plans to turn around and change the mechanic. So, this is now something entirely new they have to slot into their working schedule.
Also, while they're considering what to do, they can't really say anything about it. If they tease a feature that they then decide, after some time, doesn't actually fit the site, then it's only going to make the situation worse. I agree that they might have been better off saying that they were planning to do
something on clearer terms than they did, but it's entirely possible that this decision hadn't been finalized until recently.
And then they have to actually code and release the items. I don't think it would be that difficult to create and bugtest these items (of course, I know nothing about the backend work on FR, so I could be wrong), but it's still something that takes time, and they can't just dump it anywhere into their schedule.
On top of that, COVID happened, which has taken a toll on everyone.
There are other things that can go on behind the scenes during game development aside from what I've already mentioned, but as someone who studies the history (and current state) of games development, I can tell you that unexpected things happen all the time. Development is almost never the clear road you want it to be.
@
Twizz Thank you for writing that out! I knew there was a time when there wasn't a Scrying Workshop, but I'd never heard of the Gene Preview market before.
@
Dreamson IMO there could be multiple reasons for why it took so long, but first of all I think it's important to consider that staff wasn't going to immediately change their minds. There is always a vocal group of players who doesn't like any update, no matter what it is (this is true of everything, not just FR). So they have to spend time monitoring the playerbase to figure out 1. Is it only a vocal minority? 2. What do the majority of players feel? The majority is often silent, which means investing time into figuring out how they feel without their thoughts being conveniently written down. They have to look at site trends, pay attention to what people are doing, and take notice of how it affects the site as a whole. And that's probably not going to happen in ~3 months.
Maybe after a year they decided they didn't like the results and realized they wanted to do something about it, but then the question is: What do they do? They are going to make some people unhappy no matter what. But they obviously want to make as many people happy as possible. And they also want to stay true to their original vision, if they can. On top of all this, they also need to think about how whatever change they make will affect the site as a whole and most importantly what kind of game they want this to be at the end of the day. So then they need time to make choices, brainstorm and come up with ideas— All of this is happening while they are actively working on the development of other parts of the site. It wouldn't surprise me if this process took more than a year considering how busy other parts of development have been. FR is anti-crunch, but that doesn't mean they don't have deadlines to meet, and when the eyes were originally released there were obviously no plans to turn around and change the mechanic. So, this is now something entirely new they have to slot into their working schedule.
Also, while they're considering what to do, they can't really say anything about it. If they tease a feature that they then decide, after some time, doesn't actually fit the site, then it's only going to make the situation worse. I agree that they might have been better off saying that they were planning to do
something on clearer terms than they did, but it's entirely possible that this decision hadn't been finalized until recently.
And then they have to actually code and release the items. I don't think it would be that difficult to create and bugtest these items (of course, I know nothing about the backend work on FR, so I could be wrong), but it's still something that takes time, and they can't just dump it anywhere into their schedule.
On top of that, COVID happened, which has taken a toll on everyone.
There are other things that can go on behind the scenes during game development aside from what I've already mentioned, but as someone who studies the history (and current state) of games development, I can tell you that unexpected things happen all the time. Development is almost never the clear road you want it to be.
i believe that you believe there is a heaven
where you belong.
he/him
@
000000
At the end of the day all those reasons that you listed are just speculation because staff doesn't know how to communicate effectively and never has.
It's like watching a poorly written rom/com where all the characters problems could be solved by just talking to each other for 15minutes.
We'll probably never know why they drug their feet on this to such a ridiculous extent because if their track record is anything to go by they'll just ignore this uproar for another three years and then slap a too little too late solution on it too.
@
000000
At the end of the day all those reasons that you listed are just speculation because staff doesn't know how to communicate effectively and never has.
It's like watching a poorly written rom/com where all the characters problems could be solved by just talking to each other for 15minutes.
We'll probably never know why they drug their feet on this to such a ridiculous extent because if their track record is anything to go by they'll just ignore this uproar for another three years and then slap a too little too late solution on it too.
Yep. I am of the unpopular opinion that things should have been left alone. I agree 100% with this post. People must learn to deal with the fact that not everyone shares the same POV.
But alas, I can just adjust my goals now, sit back, and watch the forums burn as now those who were happy with the update before are kinda ticked, resellers are mad as heck, and those who wanted the vials in the first place are still mad that it took so long to make this change...
Yep. I am of the unpopular opinion that things should have been left alone. I agree 100% with this post. People must learn to deal with the fact that not everyone shares the same POV.
But alas, I can just adjust my goals now, sit back, and watch the forums burn as now those who were happy with the update before are kinda ticked, resellers are mad as heck, and those who wanted the vials in the first place are still mad that it took so long to make this change...
